In case it makes anyone feel better, it's worth noting that although this mansion apparently will not survive, there are many other mansions on Long Island's so-called Gold Coast that are both astonishingly grand and open to the public, and which were inhabited by the same crowd that Gatsby would have been a part of. So the physical remnants of Fitzgerald's inspiration aren't entirely lost. There are several great books about these places -- both the ones that are still around and the ones that didn't survive -- that are full of strange tales about the extremely wealthy and often eccentric people who lived there.